Part of the romance of James Bond, what has kept it thriving for 50 years, is that the Bond life has seemed enviable: Sex and danger and thrills and beautiful women and exotic locations and great clothes but not this time.

"Skyfall" is a different kind of Bond movie, one that works just fine on its own terms, but a steady diet of this might kill the franchise. One "Skyfall" is enough.

Put simply, James Bond's life is garbage. He can't seem to leave the house without getting shot. He has a drinking problem. His boss, M (Judi Dench), seems to be failing at her job, and physically, he's not what he used to be. For the first half hour, Craig goes through the movie unshaven, and the white stubble around the chin isn't flattering. What's more, much is made of Bond's advancing age, which seems unfair, as Craig is only 44 -- that is, a year younger than Roger Moore was when he made his first Bond movie. But that's how it is at middle age: If you smile you look young, and if you don't, you look old.

But wait, you might say, surely this Bond has something to smile about. For example, what about the "Bond girls?" Every Bond movie has at least one, a mysterious woman who puts Bond in danger, until they team up, two against the world, to do battle against the forces of darkness. And it's true, there is most certainly a Bond girl in "Skyfall." Her name is Judi Dench.

Yes, there are two other women in the movie, and they are the ostensible romantic interests. Naomie Harris plays a colleague with whom Bond has a somber frolic. And then there's Berenice Marlohe, who looks like Eva Green, smokes like Eva Green and is French like Eva Green. But she doesn't have anything near the part that Green had in "Casino Royale." Really, she only has one important scene, which she delivers well, playing a woman pretending to be the soul of cool, while terrified.

So it's Dench who occupies that central place in the film's structure and in Bond's affections, and this does a number of things, none of them good. First, it replaces a sexual relationship with a mother-son type relationship, less fun for all concerned. Second, it forces an already subdued Bond into a mode of dutifulness and subordination; that is, it turns a bad boy into a good son. Dull. Finally, it throws the emphasis on M, who was fine in small doses, but under scrutiny, seems rather sour and ungiving, and a pretty cold Mommy as mother figures go. Moreover, the evidence suggests that M is an incompetent administrator.

Still, just taken as action film and not as an entry into the James Bond canon, "Skyfall" is entertaining and fast-moving, with a well-constructed sequence involving a car chase, a shootout, a motorcycle chase and a duel to the death on top of a train -- all before the opening credits. Director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins provide the film with elegance and polish, including a number of shots that are eye-catching and some that are more than that. For example, the site of Bond, as seen from behind, as he turns into a silhouette in the frame of a doorway. Or better yet, the introduction of the villain (Javier Bardem), who, seen at first from a distance, slowly walks toward the camera, as he calmly tells a story.

Bardem is another of the film's assets, nicely embodying a villain who is giddy and brilliant and easily as happy as Bond is miserable. Bardem owns every scene he's in, though the screenplay makes ill use of him: Instead of having a grievance against Bond, he has a grievance (a legitimate one, at that) against M. So once again Bond is a bystander.

This had better not be a trend. Daniel Craig is still the second-best Bond ever, but he is falling into the Timothy Dalton trap of emphasizing the darker aspects of the character and blocking out the light.

It says something when you leave a Bond movie feeling nostalgic for the radiant self-satisfaction of the Roger Moore Bond.